Fields of Gold

No one really writes of the pastoral anymore: no ten-page homages to a single blade of grass in a forgotten field. And if the most romantic, the most nostalgic among us, could sit down and write so as to conjure the stillness of the woods as they stand watch around the pasture in those moments between dusk and darkness when the cows have lowed their last till morning-- well all my best in the quest for readership. Thomas Hardy and his compatriots have found a Siberia on the shelves of the library, a Cliffnotes analysis the final insult. It's nothing personal, more a reflection of our own shortcomings than theirs. Life is movement, if not of the body than of the mind: in a post-Darwin existence,  title of the fittest does not come easily. And literary masters though they might be, there is not enough time in the day to remove ourselves so far from the madding crowd.

But Whistlepig, as an exception to most rules, enjoyed a life of leisure, enough so as to appreciate the details that elevate the simple and serene to idyllic. Perhaps it was just in his nature, at heart an animal of the farm, to relate to tales of husbandry. Beyond speculation is the fact of the matter: Whistlepig knew how to slow down, how to place himself, despite the complexities of life, in a simple surrounding. How tempting, in light of the chaos, to be able to do the same. How tempting to take dear Mr. Marlowe up on his so nicely worded invitation: 

          Come live with me and be my Love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dale and field,

And all the craggy mountains yield.

Not to fret Dearests, I've got a whiskey that can help with that. 

a thought on the over-thought

Whistle Pig was not a philosopher. Although he rarely got offended (what’s the point, really, when you know you’re superior anyway?), he might have been offended had someone titled him such.

Philosophy and folderol of the like was a big waste of time. Whistle Pig frowned upon the fools who sat around discussing life’s meaning and a purposeful future while life whizzed by out the window. Who cares what the hell life is all about if you’re going to spend more time analyzing the concept than actually living for God’s sake?

If this seems like philosophy in itself, then shame on you darlings for reading into it.

But while Whistle Pig did not dwell on purpose, that is not to say that he was without one. His purpose was pleasure—go on and frown and have your little tirade on self-absorbedness and question, outraged, “what if we all thought that way?” But stop bullshitting yourself and ask if maybe you’d like the freedom to think that way as well. Oh please, without society’s pressure to uphold morality you’d all be rolling around with Candy from the corner—pleasure, cheap and available.

Calm down, my favorite rye drinkers, and if you must analyze Piggy’s ways, analyze this: selfishness demands a little investment in humanity’s general well being. Take those crazy environmentalists. In their prediction of man’s downfall they all condemn anthropocentricism, that school of thought that elevates the human above all else, places the needs of mankind at the forefront. But if man’s best interest is his own well being—is there really any better motivation to save the goddamn earth?

I’ve gotten off track. Live how you want or how you feel you must. Speculate and ponder if that’s what you’re about. But when you join Whistle Pig for whiskey and good conversation, please don’t make that conversation philosophical. Nothing ruins a good drink like someone trying to figure out the meaning of life.

Wake-up people! The meaning of life is in a glass in your hand. 

Please, Sir...

There were times when Whistle Pig fancied himself a saint of sorts, aching with grief at the human condition. What compassion! What empathy! To feel this degree of pain only upon witnessing the everyday tragedy of the faultlessly pathetic!

Of course, saint he most certainly was not. His reaction to human suffering—hardly selfless and hardly proactive— was guilt, darling readers, about his own privilege.

I imagine Whistle Pig is not the only one to suffer this burden. To realize the luxury and excess of your own life in the face of someone else’s nothingness can be a wearying experience. There was something so unpleasant about it, so uncomfortable, thought Whistle Pig, and he squirmed to be eating his croissant at the bus stop under the hateful eye of the have-nots.

Now a conundrum presents itself. Without the bottom, there is no one at the top; and so it seemed to Piggy-dearest that his happiness was at once made possible and threatened by those he pitied. Well now he was in a pickle.

Thank heavens for a good rye. What better way to rectify this taboo but ever-so real upstairs/downstairs dilemma than by way of a drink?

The next time the Pig felt the oncoming awareness of misfortune, he uncorked his flask and poured two glasses: one for himself, one for the bum on the corner.

You can’t pity a guy who’s drinking good whiskey. 

Rye on Canvas

Whistle Pig did not generally indulge in self-doubt. Oh yes, it is an indulgence: a pleasant wavering submission to the fact that you are not good enough, which is of course easier than manning up and refusing to pussy-foot around life’s challenges. Whistle Pig, if you will look past the irony of the phrase, preferred to man up.

But he had always allowed his confidence some leeway when it came to art. For all his trying, the Pig’s artistic endeavors had never proved aesthetically appealing. And so he had a room full of canvases stored away somewhere, maybe to serve some future utilitarian purpose along the lines of tinder.

But shame on you, Piggy dearest! Realism is for the general population, the people who need to look at a painting and see a human being staring back, a recognizable, average, everyday human being in all its boring entirety. Reach beyond that superficial understanding of painting as a visual genre. When has art ever really been about what the painter sees? Allow me a brief foray into hippie-dom: feeling, my darlings, is at the root of all the great masterpieces.

And so it was, in a moment of clarity, induced—obviously—by his drink of choice, that Whistle Pig made a final attempt at art. How the brush did dance! Skipping across canvas with unrivaled fervor, he poured out the story of our modern age. It spoke of pain. It spoke of angst. It spoke of heartache and unrequited love. And it spoke of happiness and love fulfilled and passion and really good whiskey. It was, in short, an opus for the ages.

It now hangs behind a bar somewhere. No museums or galleries for this one: none of the destinations of those pretentious elite who feign understanding of almost everything. A painting of such magnanimity deserves to be viewed by those who really truly can enjoy the finer things in life.

Rye drinkers, my sweethearts, raise a glass to art. You are the true connoisseurs. 

xx/xy

Despite how progressive society today may seem, there are so many elements that remain truly backwards. And, appreciating the female as he did, Whistle Pig could not make peace with how many of the world’s decisions fall solely to men. And because drinkers of truly fine whiskey always stand for what is right, Whistle Pig sought to teach the Old Boys some new tricks.

Today he was on his way to a very important building in a very important city where a group of very important men gathered to decide very important things.

When he slammed open the great wooden doors, silence took the room. Whistle Pig cleared his throat, not self-consciously, and stepped into the cavernous space. He proceeded to the podium and waved aside the master of ceremonies with a flick of his wrist. Aware of the snickers that were beginning to erupt, he fed their antagonism with a slow twirl, that they might take him in.

Whistle Pig did not have the figure for the dress he was wearing. Moreover, labor day was weeks past and his white patent leather heels were hardly appropriate—beyond seasonal faux pas, however, they did nothing to flatter his thick shapeless ankles.

“I love women,” began the be-dragged Pig to his bewildered audience. “I love skinny women and fat women and tall women and women that come hardly up to my ribcage. I love women with careers and lazy women and even women who chew gum too loudly, though God knows I hate a man who smacks. I love the woman at the massage parlor who smells like grapefruits and the woman at the market who sells grapefruits, and the woman at the bank who, not to be crude, has a chest like grapefruits. And if you will allow me in here in this dress looking not half as good as a woman might in it, then I see no reason for a woman not to come in here in a suit and tie, looking twice as good as you all look in yours.”

And Ms. Sanger and Ms. Roosevelt and Ms. Freidan all raised a glass to the Pig among the rest of the swine that was not too dense to grasp the big picture.

Whistle Pig believed in equality for all; except, of course, for those who did not drink his whiskey, who were obviously inferior. 

A lesson in gravity

The definition of insanity is to repeatedly try something with the same result, expecting a different outcome each time…or something along those lines. Whistle Pig did not consider himself insane. But then, there’s the old Catch-22: those who are aware they are crazy are not crazy in the least. No matter. The point, oh refined and prestigious friends, is that Whistle Pig refused to believe in ever and unchanging laws—nothing was set in stone, nothing dictated by the universe; and those who live their lives expecting the expected just to bypass the sometimes cumbersome life of curiosity are bound to dismiss the following as fallacy.

            But if the infinite beyond is as never-ending as the scientists claim, mustn’t there be one single insignificant particle somewhere that might look gravity in the eyes, and then, defiantly, fall UP? Whistle Pig was no such particle. Even he had not been chosen to be that particular exception.

But one day, when it was especially foggy and there was a chill in the air, our dear old Pig wrapped his scarf around his neck and clickety-clicked up flight after flight of shiny marble to emerge on top of the Empire State Building. And then, stepping over the wrought-iron barrier with only two pigeons to witness, he spread his tiny arms and let the New York City sidewalks decide his fate. While he did not oppose Sir Isaac Newton and shoot instead to the stars, gravity did loose its hold for the adventurer, and he stepped casually on air— down, down, down— to a street of bored and weary commuters who did not look up when the Pig descended from the sky.

And if, by your curmudgeonly cynicism, you refuse to believe it, you may also refuse the next glass of Whistle Pig that comes your way: you do not have the spirit to partake. 

Whistle Pig had always been light on his feet--an irony, considering the fact

that he was, in truth, a pig. But give the Victrola a good crank, and there would go Whistle Pig, cutting the rug in time to a bouncy Joplin rag.

This evening was no exception for our quick-hoofed friend. As he
jiggity-jogged around the room, fighting through a fragrant haze of cigar smoke, he grasped Maude--who was only too happy to oblige the pushy porker--and dragged her into the frenzy of flaying limbs that is inevitable when someone plays the piano as well as Henry was playing it now.

Whistle Pig had had his eye on Maude the entire evening. It was
hard, in a room as extravagantly large as Henry's parlor, to be a commanding presence. But if ever a presence commanded, Maude's did now. The tall brunette towered over Whistle Pig, whose rather unimpressive stature-- which did not, incidentally, dictate a limit to his staggering ego--brought him just to her chest, which was flat and boyish, in keeping with vogue.

Maude laughed like she knew she was being admired. Head tipped back so her bobbed hair just brushed the back of her lovely pale neck, she became charmingly amused whenever Henry tinkled across an f-sharp or when the woman next to her whose tumbler--and teeth, for that matter--was smudged with red lipstick, began to divulge stories of the fast women that her mother had warned her never to become.

And then there was Maude's impeccable taste in beverage. In the time Whistle Pig had been watching her, Maude had gone to the bar three times to refill her glass, each time returning with that unmistakable amber-colored luxury, that stand-alone staple of a gentleman's cabinet, that liquid scintillation of tremulous effect: the whiskey that, in honor of the very superior specimen that Whistle Pig had proven himself to be, had been named--what else?--Whistle Pig. He had to have a dance with this divine creature.

And so he did. They danced the Charleston. They danced the Black Bottom. They danced the Lindy Hop. Then they danced the Charleston again.

For all his lusting after her, Maude's winning over was not so much a record for the books as a regular occurrence. Whistle Pig was accustomed to getting what he wanted. Perhaps it was his boyish charm. Perhaps it was his surprising intellectuality. Perhaps it was the impeccably tailored three-piece pinstriped affairs that he donned on all occasions. Whatever the case, Whistle Pig had only to introduce himself before counting a new addition on the long list of willing admirers.